Title: Better Homes & Gardens Best Holiday Desserts
Author: none specified
Date: 1984
Publisher: Meredith Corporation
ISBN: none
Length: 16 pages
Illustrations: full-color photos
Quote: "Sensational desserts are the highlight of eveyr holiday meal."
It's a booklet more than a cookbook, but it's packed with the classic junk dessert recipes, beginning with the Carnation Evaporated Milk fudge. Evaporated milk is an essential ingredient (the recipe works without the corn syrup though) and it's a classic, never-fail fudge recipe. You can safely try all kinds of variations: chocolate or carob (my family used to like El Molino carob powder and black walnuts), peanut, pecan, mint, any wacky flavoring you found on sale. The combination of evaporated milk, relatively little butter, and lots of marshmallow makes it a winner, whatever you do with it.
The recipes go on from there: peanut brittle, toffee, Rocky Road, popcorn balls, pecan pie, fruitcake, pumpkin pie, trifle, banana cream pie, cut-out cookies, chocolate chip cookies, hot fudge sauce and many more.
If your family and friends like holiday treats made with evaporated milk and/or corn syrup and/or flaked coconut, this collection, sponsored by manufacturers of those products, will become your go-to holiday treat cookbook.
More likely, it'll join your vintage cookbook collection--but it is part of North American culture that children learn to make each of these recipes, once. Unless someone's allergies are severe, you'll want to dust off this little recipe list, or even make a few photocopies, so the kids can have these cooking experiences. You can still serve the sophisticated unsugared pears in wine syrup to your grown-up friends.
According to Amazon this little collectible is currently valued at only $4. (In 1984, would anyone have dared to sell it for fifty cents? It came with your magazine and/or junkfood cooking ingredients.) Prices are rising.
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